So here is one where I took a piece of cut seatpost and just duct-taped it to my rack:


And this is one for tibikefor2 because he wants a way to mount it on the cross bike:

There are a couple of ways to rig it. The thing is you need a fore aft not just a horizontal anchor or it will slide around. For a seat like mine with a cut-out, you can just drill once all the way through the tube (PVC works as well as chopped carbon fiber, and you can always color it black with a magic marker) and loop around a long zip tie to snug it up. Or you can drill two off-center holes and wrap it all the way around the post itself. In this case you will want to cut it slimmer than as shown and then it will wedge between the rails.

Of course, this takes away your ability to carry a seatbag, but I don't need that anyway. I just keep my tools in a plastic envelope in my bag, and as I use different bags, that makes it simple to swap things around. If I go for a weekend ride they can go in a jersey pocket or the seatbag.

If you haven't heard of this light you can go to www.dinottelighting.com. This is about the brightest tail-light out there:


I don't mean to be shilling for them - I confess they did give me a pro-deal on this light - just throwing it out there for your consumtion. I feel safer with this light behind me and people do seem to give me a wider berth, especially on high-speed roads, because they can see me from so far away.

Right on What were you using before you got the DiNotte? What sorts of roads do you tend to ride on?

I've seen the Dinotte in action and man is that an excellent tail light. Broad daylight you can see it more than a block away. I'm so jealous.

Nice and simple, like the Dinotte itself. I just got my 3W/5W combo, and just beginning to get it set up right and wring it out. I must say, their service is fantastic!

Rob was very responsive and they sent a number of little extras (O-rings, battery holders, etc) along with the lights that make a huge difference in creating the optimal setup.

I have a question about the tail light: what makes it red? Is it the lens or does it have a red LED? DiNotte has the specs as a 3W LED, but it's much brighter than their other 3W models.

I just had blinkys the shop had in stock - a Vista light or something. Also I'm using this backpack: https://www.timbuk2.com/tb2/retail/ca...?categoryId=41 when I'm not riding the Lemond, which has a rack/pannier going on. That silver reflective stripe on the backpack is really something as well.

I have no idea!

As far as roads I have to be on some busy ones if I take the train home on Monday nights after class. Otherwise I'm on busy Washington DC streets for a couple miles to the bike trail, then about 13 miles on the trail and then a couple more miles on streets, although I've worked out a path of mostly back streets. But still, $~100+ is a small price to pay for safety.

It should be a red Luxeon LED, and I heard that the red ones put out more lumens per watt than the white ones. Hey flythebike, could you put the light about 4 meters from a white wall and take a no-flash photo of the beam pattern on the wall, and post it? I'm curious how big the "spread" of the beam is.

Attached: similar pics of a SuperFlash beam spread and a Nova Bull beam spread at about 4 meters.

The bike and I are 4 meters from the wall. Those curtains measure slightly wider than 2 meters so the spread is about 2.5-3 meters.

Also, I fiddle-faddled a bit and ended up with this:

The only trick is that you have to mount the o-ring "permanently". You have to put it in place and then tie the zip tie or it goes on crooked. But this way you just need the one zip tie and it is snuged under the seat, doesn't move and won't hit your thighs.

Very nice! So perfect aim isn't 100% necessary

I just picked up one of these Dinotte tail lights. I have to take expensive items off my bike when I park it and I'd like to maintain the status quo where I remove my tail light with my seat wedge. Since my current wedge (Novara small, 6x3x3 in, 49 cu in.) is crammed full I can't stick the battery pack safely into the seat wedge and then attach the light to the exterior strap. I was thinking of getting the size up (Novara medium, 7.7x3.9x3.7 in, 91 cu in.) or a Topeak expanding aero wedge (8x5x3.8 in, 80 cu in.) to start with. Then I'll have to try to do the PVC pipe trick with the wedge pack.

Anyone here have the light mounted in a similar fashion? Basically I'm trying to speed up the process of getting everything off the bike at work and putting it back on.

Ok here's the way I mounted the Dinotte tail light. Instead of getting a bigger seatbag which I didn't really want I bought a length of velcro from a crafts store and sewed it to the end of the seat bag closest to the seat post. Use the thickest thread you can find and make sure you use a very sharp and thick needle as it's kind of difficult to punch through the fabric otherwise.

After sewing the loop on I simply used an extra piece of velcro to attach the loop on the back of the battery pack to the loop I sewed to the bag. I then used the Dinotte strap to wrap all the way around the battery pack to protect it against additional bumps.

The Novara seat bag isn't waterproof so I didn't bother using seam sealer but you can see that it's out of the weather for the most part anyway as it's right under the seat.

I used a piece of washer hose and some zip ties to attach the Dinotte light to the existing loop on the seat bag. I can adjust the level of the tail light by pulling the O-ring towards the front or back of the light. Currently I have the light pointed somewhat down so it projects more towards the ground than straight back.

Having just made my own hub dynamo powered luxeon headlight and seeing how cheap the components are why are these not supplied with a decent mount?
You shouldn't have to jury rig something out of cable ties and bits of old seat post when paying so much.

It's designed to be clipped directly to the seatpost and then you can use velcro to fasten the battery pack to the tube below the light. The O-ring is simple and very stable but it limits the ways you can attach the light, as any factory supplied mount will in some way. So if you don't have a seat bag or a trunk it's perfectly functional. Some people don't like the light on the side of the tube because it rubs against their legs.

I couldn't get it attached directly to the tube because the seat bag is in the way. Also I remove the seat bag from the bike whenever I lock up so I wanted a "one piece" solution where I'd remove the bag and the entire Dinotte light & battery pack setup in one motion.

I don't think it's a fair criticism for the light for it not to be able to handle every conceivable mounting situation. Besides, it didn't take that much time or money for me to create exactly what I wanted.

I've shown my mount before, and others have had me post theirs on my blog.

See HERE, HERE and HERE.

Great light, lousy mounting system. It's a red Luxeon III, and -- at 140 lumens -- they do put out more light than their white counterparts.

It is a red LED and is much brighter than the white LED of the same power. This is because LEDs are single wavelength light sources. The red LED is a single wavelength of red light. White light has a spectrum of light so to recreate this white LEDs are actually a UV LED that illuminates a phospor that reradiates in a spectrum of light that appears white. Because UV LEDs are not a efficient as red and the phosphor is not 100% efficient, white LEDs are not as efficient as red. LEDs are much more efficient than any other currently available for single color lights. However the loss of efficiency in creating white light from a single color means that light sources like HID are as or more efficient.
Craig

Maybe not fair, but certainly valid. They've gone high-end with their products, then cheaped out with the mount. I'm not sure why...

For another fifty cent they should be able to provide another style mount, less if their volume was higher.

I will try to post a picture of my tail light mounting.

I use a cross bike for commuting so I had to use a slightly different moutning technique due to canti-lever brakes.

1. I cut a piece of PVC dow to the correct size.
2. Drilled a hole in the pipe so that I could bolt the pvc pipe to the brake bridge. (I used locktite to secure the bolt in the brake bridge threads)
3. Use two zip ties to support the PVC pipe against the brake bridge

Please do, it sounds interesting.

simple mount:

adjustable mount:

Very slick. Might want to shorten that bolt though.

Cool. What kind of hardware is that?

the non-adjustable is a 3/4" conduit hanger ($0.47 at lowes in the electrical dept) and the adjustable is a 3/4" clevis hanger ($1.43 at lowes in the plumbing dept). both have holes in the top so i just used the same screw hole that was already in the rack.

the non-adjustable mount fit the light better but these lights are sooo bright that i think aiming the light down a little at night is warranted.

i thought about that but i kinda like having the extra leverage...it makes the side-to-side adjustment a lot easier. it's tucked away under the rack anyways.

I hadn't thought about side to side adjustment. I retract my statement.